IRU – 5th IRU/EU Transport Conference

DRIVING EUROPE FORWARD

The latest DG Energy newsletter is online !

The latest DG Energy newsletter is online!

Wednesday, 1 April, 2015

Editorial by Dominique Ristori, Director-General for Energy

Our Energy Union plans are on track. This month I am pleased to say that at the March European Council EU leaders gave their full backing to the strategy proposed by the Commission. Affordable, secure and sustainable energy is our common goal.

Meanwhile, the building blocks that will help us achieve Energy Union are being placed. In March, DG Energy launched a new call for proposals for Projects of Common Interest that will release €100 million for projects aimed at ending the isolation of some European countries from the rest of the EU energy network, eliminating energy bottlenecks and completing the internal energy market.

One area of Europe that needs urgent energy infrastructure attention is the Iberian Peninsula. Here, the lack of energy infrastructure is putting the brakes on the creation of a regional electricity market and preventing Spanish and Portuguese businesses and citizens from benefitting from the EU internal electricity market. On 4 March, President Juncker, Commissioner Arias Cañete, French President Hollande, Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy and Portuguese Prime Minister Coelho met to discuss actions. I am pleased that a ‘High Level Group for South-West Europe’ has been created to focus our work on this.

Another subject under the spotlight this month was the report on ‘Completing Europe – From the North-South Corridor to Energy, Transportation and Telecommunications Union’. We met with Central Europe Energy Partners to discuss its findings. CEEP chairman Pawel Olechnowicz tells more in this edition’s guest editorial.

At the London Forum, citizen’s opinions on energy were high on our agenda. The Forum welcomed our Energy Union plans with citizens at the core, and showed how Energy Union will allow people across Europe to benefit from new technologies to bring bills down and take part actively in the energy market. I’m sure you’ll agree that getting people involved and passionate about energy use is key to a successful energy policy.

March also brought good news for our work on renewable energy – the share of renewables in Europe rose to 15% in 2013 showing that we are moving closer towards meeting our 2020 target of 20%. In Europe we can be proud of being a world-leader in renewables. Meanwhile, at our renewables conference this month we showed how, by transforming its energy sector, Europe has set the standard for the rest of the world – that’s inspirational news for us all.